If the "what" is eating unbuttered toast, clipping toenails or filing tax returns, then yeah, Friday's concert more than lived up to the tour name. But compared with your average arena-scale country show, crazy wasn't the distinguishing adjective. | Sept. 14, 2013»Read Full Article(1)

During an early rehearsal for "Ragtime," the musical opening this week as the largest and most expensive production in the 60-year history of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, stage director Mark Clements and musical director Dan Kazemi were taking the 35-actor cast through "Success," the song in which immigrants arriving at Ellis Island sing their dreams of America.

Actors representing arrivals from Haiti, Italy, and Latvia march ashore, where, E.L. Doctorow tells us in the 1975 novel that became a musical, those immigrants "were immediately sensitive to the enormous power of the immigration officials," exercising a "dazzling" and autocratic power reminiscent of the worlds they'd left behind. | Sept. 13, 2013»Read Full Article(1)

One of the more profound paradoxes about the human condition prefaces Leonard Rosen's "The Tenth Witness" (The Permanent Press, $29.95), a novel I'm sure will make my best of the year list. The book's prologue is from novelist and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel — "I still believe in man in spite of man." Rosen's deeply compelling mystery explores the hope and the despair, the evil and the good at the core of Wiesel's statement.

An "Anjou pear in December" takes narrator Henri Poincaré back to the 1970s before he became an Interpol investigator. As an engineer working on designing a dive rig off the Dutch coast, Poincaré falls for Liesel Kraus, an heir to a German steel fortune, one built on munitions manufacturing using concentration camp labor during World War II and now using slave labor from China (that many global corporations are perpetuating camp-like work conditions is a significant theme in this book). | Sept. 13, 2013»Read Full Article

"How McGruff and the Crying Indian Changed America: A History of Iconic Ad Council Campaigns," by Wendy Melillo. Smithsonian. 240 pages. $27.95

Many of the best-remembered ad campaigns of the past half-century — "Only you can prevent forest fires," "A mind is a terrible thing to waste," "Take a bite out of crime," the "Crying Indian" Keep America Beautiful commercials — were created by the Ad Council, a nonprofit driven by the nation's leading advertising agencies.

In "How McGruff and the Crying Indian Changed America," Wendy Melillo charts the course of these landmark ad campaigns and shows how they delivered more than public-service messages. | Sept. 13, 2013»Read Full Article

"Bleeding Edge," Thomas Pynchon's fabulously entertaining new novel, begins on New York's Upper West Side during the first day of spring. Maxine Tarnow is walking her two boys to school. The sun shines through clusters of pear blossoms, filling the world with light.

This being Pynchon and the year being 2001, the good times don't last. Long before the towers come tumbling down just past the novel's midway point, we've descended into an underworld featuring Russian gangsters, an Italian mobster, a foot fetishist, an embezzler and Maxine herself, who is a decertified fraud examiner running an outfit called Tail 'Em and Nail 'Em. | Sept. 13, 2013»Read Full Article

Sneak preview of how Skylight integrated a Microsoft Kinect and brain EEG reader into its production of 'Fidelio.'

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The Viswa Subbaraman era at the Skylight Music Theatre commences this week with a production that reflects the new artistic director's classical training, Indian roots and generational fascination with interactive technology.

In Waukesha writer Kathie Giorgio's new novel, "Learning to Tell (A Life) Time," two girls are abused by older men, and their reactions to that abuse shape them as adults: Mara Rose Mayfield and her daughter, Amy Sue Dander, better known as Cooley.

But "like mother, like daughter" is not a cliché that applies here. What happened to both girls, and how they turned out, couldn't be more different. | Sept. 13, 2013»Read Full Article

The radio silence that recently fell over retransmission negotiations between Journal Broadcast Group and Time Warner Cable suggests that the two sides have stopped shouting at each other finally and started talking.

The latest statement by Steve Wexler, vice president of radio and TV for Journal Broadcast, affirms that belief. It says that the two sides are "finally engaged in active negotiations ... to close the gap on our remaining differences." | Sept. 13, 2013»Read Full Blog Post(32)

Bay View will be getting a new frozen yogurt, gelato and crepes shop, likely in early November. Susan Nolan will open Cream City Swirl at 2663 S. Kinnickinnic Ave., at Lenox St.

Crepes will be made to order, with fillings such as fresh fruit and Nutella, Nolan said. The store will have bottled beverages, iced tea and coffee, and possibly hot chocolate for winter. | Sept. 13, 2013»Read Full Blog Post

For years, Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood, from improv comedy TV series "Whose Line Is It Anyway?," have been braving the Milwaukee winters to put on shows at the Pabst Theater. In April, they're going for year 10.

If you want to make it as a musician, writing songs and playing shows are just the beginning.

Last weekend, the third annual, Milwaukee-based Yellow Phone Music Conference assembled members of other oft-important roles in a musician's success — label representatives, talent buyers, managers and more — for illuminating panel discussions. | Sept. 13, 2013»Read Full Article

Ching Hwa, the Chinese restaurant that had been in business for 24 years at 1947 E. Main St., Waukesha, closed in August. The owners retired, according to the restaurant’s website. | Sept. 13, 2013»Read Full Blog Post

West Allis has a new spot for coffee and sandwiches: Urban Joe Cafe, at 7028 W. Greenfield Ave.

Owner Joe Tairi opened the cafe last Friday. It serves its own blend of coffee, as well as the spectrum of hot and cold espresso drinks and loose-leaf and iced teas. | Sept. 13, 2013»Read Full Blog Post(1)

6 p.m. Friday

You might want to catch 'em all: "Battle City," a Pokemon-inspired art show, moves into the Milwaukee Enterprise Center this weekend, featuring work by artists from around the world based on the still-popular game and TV show. | Sept. 13, 2013»Read Full Article